


The Shimmering

by Claudia_flies



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Blood and Violence, Captain America Reverse Big Bang 2018, Dark Fairy Tale Elements, Embedded Images, F/M, Fae & Fairies, Fae Magic, Fairy Tale Elements, Falling In Love, Flowers, Forests, Magical Realism, alternative universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-26
Updated: 2018-05-26
Packaged: 2019-05-13 16:47:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14752593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Claudia_flies/pseuds/Claudia_flies
Summary: Clint looks into the thick, dark woodland surrounding him on both sides. With a moment's hesitation, he picks up his bow and his pack and heads into the thicket.





	The Shimmering

**Author's Note:**

  * For [talkplaylove](https://archiveofourown.org/users/talkplaylove/gifts).



> Written for the Captain America Reverse Big Bang 2018.
> 
> I had the privilege of working with the very talented [talkplaylove](http://talkplaylove.tumblr.com/), and write for their amazing and magical Natasha/Clint piece. You can see all of their amazing work relating to this story embedded in the fic and also on their Tumblr under [The Shimmering](http://talkplaylove.tumblr.com/tagged/the-shimmering) tag, so please head over to take a look!
> 
> This has been beta'd by the ever-patient and wonderful Zilia.

 

 

 

The bike runs out of gas in the middle of a dirt track. He’s still hours from Budapest and the extraction point. The sounds of the rumbling trucks and motorcycles echo in the predawn silence as they give chase. Clint had hoped to have lost them near the last village, by the crossroads there, but that doesn’t seem to have been the case. Or maybe they have enough manpower to extend the search in all directions. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter.

He looks to the left, and to the right, his side aching where he’d taken a well-placed kneecap in the fight. He looks into the thick, dark woodland surrounding him on both sides. With a moment's hesitation, he picks up his bow and his pack and heads into the thicket. The leaves and moss do something to help hide his tracks, but not much. He makes it maybe a klick deep into the forest when he hears the sounds, the shouts and even the pop of a few stray bullets shot his way.

_Idiots_ , he thinks grimly. Revealing their position so easily. Maybe they feel strength in their numbers. It does sometimes seem that Hydra has an endless supply of foot soldiers. Maybe they think the noise will scare him, will disorient him in the woods. Instead, Clint presses on, deeper and deeper. Hiding behind shrubberies and the thick trunks of old trees, careful where he puts his feet, silent as he moves. He tries to look for higher ground, a way to elevate himself, but the trees would probably trap him more in this terrain than help him evade his would-be captors.

The sounds keep echoing behind him; sometimes he thinks they are close, too close, and sometimes he can barely hear them, straining the capabilities of even his SHIELD custom-built hearing aids. He stops to look at a huge tree; at its moss-covered trunk and twisted roots. He’s seen it before, has passed by it, noting its strange shape as a landmark.

He tries to think, tries to focus. He’s seen it before, passed it, he must have, because it looks so familiar. He doesn’t remember how many times he’s crossed it, suddenly. He tries to blink, eyes dry even in the early-morning mist of the woodland. He tries to make out the shape of the trees, to orient himself, but it’s almost like the air itself is shifting, moving as he looks at it. Everything in motion right before his eyes.

The sounds are closer now; the leaves of the trees tremble and shiver. Clint drops to the ground with only a fraction of a second to spare. The bullet misses him by mere inches, sinking into the bark of the old tree. Clint swears that he can almost hear the wood groan from the impact.

He doesn’t have time to speculate on the changing landscape, his hands reaching over his shoulder, the motions so practiced and familiar that they’re almost instinct. Automatic like the beating of his heart, the expanse of his lungs as he breathes out and takes aim. Bullets explode around him, moss and leaves scattering around his legs, a ricochet off the bark hitting the side of his face as he releases the arrow. It flies true, as they always do for him. A headshot. And another one, and then everything stops. The sounds of the fight cut off almost like a knife’s edge cutting through a stick of butter. The leaves and moss hang in the air like time itself has been brought to a stop.

He sees the foxfire, little pinpricks of light, dancing in the thicket. Green and shimmering and terrible. They moved towards him, towards the men, getting bigger and brighter and overshining the dawn’s early light.

The sound, when it starts, makes him groan. Thrumming and deep, vibrating in his bones like it wants to turn him inside out. From the corner of his eye, he sees a man with his hands stretched out. Glock grasped firmly in his fist, his mouth open in a scream, but Clint hears no sound. Everything is still and frozen around them. Then, as if a giant hand had reached out and pulled, his chest caves out, organs and bones sliding wetly into the leaves, the smack and tumble of his body, and as quickly as it had stopped, suddenly everything starts to move again.

Clint fights to not heave at the acrid smell of blood and human waste as the man dies, his eyes wide and scared. He doesn’t see the second man, bent over as he is, but he hears him over the everlasting thrum. A scream he thought no human could make tears through the wood, and then the sound cuts off like it was never there, sharp and final like a full stop at the end of a page.

Clint tries to stand up, to ready his bow again with shaking fingers. This is not him; his hands are always steady, always ready. He sees the men, those who had been pursuing him all the way from the base, the insignia of the skull on their biceps. Proudly showing their allegiance. Their guns and weapons drawn, standing between the trees, their faces now pulled into rictus masks of horror and terror. Teeth gleaming with saliva while they scream, but Clint still can’t see what’s hunting them. The fires shifting and moving around them, a shimmering horror that has no form.

His fingers still tremble on the nock of the arrow as he tries to aim again, nearly blinded then by those dancing flickers of light. There’s something malevolent in them, something sickly and gleeful, but beautiful too, and Clint can’t look away, his eyes fixed as the men die around him. The sounds of their deaths echo in his skull, some fast and some drawn-out.

He thinks he can see shapes then, moving among the trunks of the trees. The slope of an elegant back, and the flick of a hand. Maybe those are fingers around a man’s neck as he slowly chokes on what seems like only air. Mouth open and tongue lolling, like a rope pulled taut around his collar, tendons fighting to the last breath.

Then there’s nothing but silence. The lack of noise is so sudden it makes him gasp, just from the lack of pressure, the lack of ear-shattering pain. He finds himself crouched down in the ground, grasping his bow, and still the arrow resting on the nocking point.

The lights dance among the trees, and he can hear an echo of laughter, high and feminine. Giggles and soft footsteps. They call and beckon him, wordless words that pull at his brain and his chest, forcing him to move. He stumbles when he goes to follow them, his body moving as if on a string. Pulling, pulling, deeper into the woods.

_“Come, come,”_ the voices say. Beckoning him into the dark, and he goes, walks and walks until his feet carry him no more. He falls to his knees in the wet undergrowth, his face pressing into the moss as he falls, and then he sleeps.

 

* * *

 

The sleeping man doesn’t look like a lost one. Doesn’t seem like one of the leftovers, but he uses weapons of one, and Natasha wants to be sure. Her sisters giggle and play around her, buoyed from the battle, blood lingering still between their teeth and fingernails. The scent of the men and their deaths has become their perfume for now. It won’t last long, not with the fresh honeysuckle they weave into their hair. Natasha doesn’t bother; she likes to wear the proof of her conquests as long as possible.

They’d been pulled from their slumber and from their play by the sounds of men and their guns. Their inelegant weapons. Trudging through the woods like they own them, in the way that they believe they own everything put on the earth. Careless and loud like they always are.

But not this one. Natasha marvels at the sleeping form of him pressed into the moss as comfortably as one would be into a feather pillow. The bow is still grasped in his hand, black and gleaming and beautiful. An elegant weapon from a more elegant time that they all miss with a fierceness unknown to mankind.

She hovers over him, and he does smell like the world of men, but then he would. Having lived there, having come from there. He must have been stuck there for so long. She reaches out and touches the soft corner of his eye, the lines there, follows them with her fingernail, softly, so softly. Skims the tip of her finger over his short, black lashes, touches the vulnerable lid of his eye and imagines the green of his iris just beneath.

Yes, this one is different, she thinks. Tasting it in her mouth, and this does make the scent of battle recede, a new interest growing in her.

She sprints around the clearing, fluttering and almost nervous now. Gathering up a palmful of bluebells, of periwinkles and morning glory. Flicking the stems, up and over and into a knot. Again and again, until all the flowers are neatly tied up in a circle of green and blue.

The flower crown fits neatly over his head, settling onto the ripe wheatfield color of his hair.

Now everyone will know not to touch him in his slumber. Will know that he belongs to her, to Natasha alone. Her sisters tease and cajole her from a safe distance, laughing at her fascination. They have no interest in the world of men anymore, or the people in it, but Natasha is curious and she ignores them in favor of observing her captive as he sleeps.

He doesn’t look so different from the ones they’d killed. The shape of his hands and feet and the vulnerable back of his skull. She doesn’t know if it was only the bow that swayed her hand, the familiar way in which he held it like he knew it, like it was an extension of himself. She marvels the way he still holds it even in sleep. Raw knuckles strained where he holds the grip.

He wakes so suddenly, with a startled noise, pushing up from the ground to hands and knees, shaking his head like a dog shakes off water, and Natasha flits back to her sisters, hiding behind a leaf. The crown nearly flies off with his movements, but she’d placed it true and it holds on, just a tad lopsided over one ear.

The man rolls to sit up, looking around the clearing. Sunlight filters through the thick branches, lighting everything with an emerald sheen. The leaves sway in the brief morning wind. Fluttering their own welcome to him. He touches the blooms resting on his head, carefully, gently. Fingers trailing over the leaves and petals like he doesn’t really know what to make of them. Maybe he’s been away too long, doesn’t remember the customs, the welcome gift of home. Doesn’t remember Vyraj or the shimmering that awaits.

Her sisters shove and press, vying for the best position to watch him from. Natasha ignores them all; he is hers now, claimed by her hands and by her crown. She only needs his name take him across the veil. To keep him as her own. She finds herself smiling, hungry all of a sudden, ravenous from the fight, and he looks ever so tasty.

On the ground, the man looks around, eyes tracking the surrounding trees, wide with wonder or apprehension, she can’t tell. It takes him a moment to notice the tittering of a bluejay. But when he does, he pats his sides, digs into a pocket of his black jacket and pulls out a round disc, brushing the lint off the top with a frown. The eager little bird hopping from branch to branch. Its chirpy calls soon attracting a slew of its kind.

He crumbles the biscuit between thick fingers, scrunching his nose as he smiles up at the birds. Scattering the crumbs on the ground near his feet. They almost shine with gold against the green moss, on the thick carpet of leaves.

Natasha and her sisters all hold their breaths as the birds move towards the treat, all of them clustered together like a pod of brightly colored porpoises. She can feel them all collectively tensing, ready to strike, nails and teeth clicking, but the man just watches the birds. Calloused hands over his bent knees. A faint smile hovering on his lips, green eyes opaque and unreadable even to Natasha’s skill in reading the hearts of men.

He watches the birds for a long time, smiles when they fly up to a branch, titter and flirt for more food. The man just spreads his hand like he’s showing he has nothing more to give, and the gesture makes Natasha smile a secret smile she hides behind her hand lest her sisters see it.

Eventually, the man moves, carefully folding up his bow and placing his quiverful of arrows on the ground. Her sisters hiss and spit when he pulls out his gun from a holster on his leg, and Natasha finds herself joining them. The sound escaping between her teeth. Bullets that rip the bark and roots and fragile stems of the plants all around them. The heavy boots of men that crush everything in their wake. These things she knows, has learned to hate and fear.

He is not a lost one, just an ordinary man like the rest. She feels saddened by the realization, by the metal scent of the weapon here, deep in the heart of the forest. She had not wanted to kill this one. Had wanted this one to be different. Her wishes matter naught. Never have.

She tells her sisters to go, tells them that she will take care of this one. The last of those who dared to breach the quiet of their forest, the last refuge in these parts. She knows there must be others, in jungles and other deep forests of the world, but the messages and connections are lost to time, like so many things.

Maybe she should lure him away from here; the clearing seems too peaceful for spilling blood. She thinks of it soaking into the earth, covering the few crumbs the blue jays have yet to find. Festering into the moss and marking this place forever.

He places the gun over his quiver, absentmindedly reaching up to nudge the crown back to its rightful place over the top of his head. He eases off the thick vest that covers his chest, undoing the buckles that keep it in place. It looks quite heavy as he places it on the stone, still careful of the liverwort that grows on the side of the rock, reaching up towards the sky.

He touches the flowers on his head again and carefully removes the crown, gentle on the flowers and their delicate stems. He places the crown on the rock too, with a kind of reverence Natasha had not been expecting. His motions are economical and careful; he grimaces as he finally pulls his shirt over his head, revealing an expanse of muscled chest and a mottled purple bruise over his side.

His body is not unpleasant, for a human, she thinks. Watching from her hiding place, licking her lips and teeth. Ravenous for something she struggles to name.

Natasha has seen so many in her time. Fat and skinny, tall and short. Some of the men stripping at the first sign of her call, at the whiff of her scent, some only disrobing when they see her in the rock pool, looking at them from under her lashes, through the curtain of her red hair. Beckoning with a fingertip. They all follow her to their deaths almost gladly in the end.

But this man isn’t disrobing for her, or for any of her sisters. He probes the bruise with blunt, thick fingers, his face grim. Touches the gash on his arm. It’s not bleeding anymore, but the flesh is still an angry red. The blood caked and oozing. She looks at the birds, still loitering around, looking for a handout, looks at the pristine liverwort and the slope of the bluebells, of periwinkles and of the morning glory he so carefully laid down.

And she makes up her mind.

 

* * *

Clint’s grateful most of the injuries seem superficial at worst. The bullet graze on his arm hurts the most, but the bruising over his ribs could have been much worse, especially in the middle of the woods with his meager first aid kit. Sometimes his luck still seems to hold. He’d joked once that it was his superpower, and now it only feels like a half of a joke.

He eyes the flower crown, curious. Its mere presence indicates that he isn’t alone. Well, the strange fight should have indicated as much, really, but he wonders at it, the whimsy of it. About the reasons why someone, or some _thing_ , would place it over his head. As he reaches out to touch the bluish petals, something flits at the corner of his eye. Clint can’t help but startle, unarmed and topless.

She hovers in the air in front of him, because it is clearly a _she_. With a green shirt and a frilly sort of skirt; bare feet even in the cool air of the clearing. Clint knows that rationally he should be wary of the shimmering wings that seem to keep her airborne, but after the guy with the hammer, he’s pretty ready to accept most things. So, instead of questioning his own sanity, he simply says “hi!”

She flips in the air like a trapeze artist, like a ballerina in a music box.

“Why don’t you give me your name?” she demures, with a sweet smile that belies a set of sharp teeth.

Clint can’t help the sudden laugh that escapes him, thinking of his mother’s tales in the back of a circus caravan. The rolling and hitching of the back wheel that they never did get fixed, no matter how many times she complained about it.

“Would you give me yours in return?” he asks, thinking of it as more of a joke, but she startles, hovering in the air, wings beating a staccato in the silence of the clearing.

“You know of the bargain?” she asks, eyes narrowing in suspicion, and Clint can’t help but laugh again at the absurdity of it all.

For some strange reason, he decides on honesty.

“Tales learned on my mother’s knee,” Clint hedges, and she hums then, nodding.

“A wise place to learn.”

She does another somersault in the air before landing on the rock by the flower crown.

“Would you tell me what to call you instead, then?”

He shrugs, wouldn’t be the first Devil’s bargain he’s entered, and he simply says, “Clint.”

“You may call me Natasha,” she says with a smile. Her voice is quite deep, pleasant even, when she isn’t trying to trick him.

She runs her hands over his kevlar vest resting on the rock and the soaked fabric of his shirt. Curious and almost playful with her hands. There’s a part of his brain that thinks that he must still be asleep, still dreaming, with the almost chimera-like shimmer of her wings.

She walks around the rock and steps inside the circle of the flower crown. Neatly folding her legs under the strips of fabric that make up her skirt.

“You are not one of the leftovers,” she says matter-of-factly, staring at him with her sharp green eyes.

“The what?”

“Those left behind in the world of men, those who refused to retreat beyond the shimmer, into the Vyraj,” she explains like he’s a simpleton, like it’s something everyone should know.

Clint shakes his head. “No, I don’t think I’m one of those. I work for SHIELD, I was out here on a recon mission.”

She hums. “Those men who followed you?”

Clint nods. “They’re part of an organization that, well, I guess they’re trying to take over the world.”

“All of your kind is always trying to take over the world,” she returns testily, looking at him from under her brow.

He wonders then about her age, about his mother’s tales, about old gods and new beliefs, and whether any of this is really real. Thinks of those picture books he had all but forgotten, of drawing of her kin dancing in the clearing, of dresses made of flower petals and leaves and strung together with bits of grass. He thinks of himself, of his black, unyielding kevlar, of his guns and weapons and the acrid smell of gunpowder.

“Yeah, I guess we are.”

He has nothing else to offer her, no platitudes or defenses

“Why is that?” she asks, and it’s such an innocent question to be asked with a mouth that hints at darkness and death.

“I don’t know,” he tells her again, willed into honesty that he doesn’t feel.

“I guess that is a fair answer, with just one of you here.”

She hops back into the air, her wings whispering like a hummingbird’s. She surveys him from the air, face pulled into an almost frown. Clint feels like he’s being weighed and measured against some unknown set of scales, but guesses that’s fair, if this place is really hers.

When she eventually lands again, she crouches down into the moss and picks up one of the crumbs of the rusk biscuit. She rolls it in her palm, sniffing it.

“Why did you feed them?” she asks suddenly, looking at him sharply from the ground, that assessing frown on her brow again. The birds, almost as if they understand her question, freeze around them, and suddenly the forest is silent, holding its breath.

“I don’t know,” Clint shrugs again. “Seemed like the thing to do, I guess.”

He feels stupid saying it, but he can come up with no other reason, and telling the truth has worked out fairly well so far.

“There seems to be a great many things you don’t know,” she intones with an arched brow, and Clint has to laugh.

“You wouldn't be the first person to tell me that.”

She laughs then too, clear as a bell, and then seems almost shocked by her own mirth. Closing her mouth on the sound, but she can’t seem to help her smile.

It’s strange watching her, such a peculiar creature, but there’s something in her that seems almost familiar, so much like the home that was always moving around. Clint wonders if that’s her magic at work. Luring weary travelers deep into the woods to be seduced and consumed. Never to be seen again. He thinks of the circus, those transient places left empty and hollow after they’d gone.

She clears her throat, pulling Clint from his thoughts, and drops a handful of berries into his cupped palm, motioning him to eat. She lands on the rock again and pets the flowers of the crown. They already look a bit lopsided, drooping to the side. He wonders how long it’d been on his head, how long he’d been asleep for. How long he’s been in the woods for. If anyone worries for him.

Instead of asking, he rolls the berries on his palm. On the inside, they’re a visceral blue, and the juice taints his hands when he crushes them between his fingers. He pops a few into his mouth and they’re sweet and juicy, the blueberry flavor more intense than he’s used to.

“How long was I asleep?” He motions toward the ground, where the imprint of his body is still pressed into the moss. The sugar of the berries still lingering in his mouth as he speaks. His tongue must be painted blue too.

She shrugs, nonchalant, kicking her legs and making the fabric of her dress flick and pouf.

“Not long, just half of the day.”

Clint rubs his hands on his pants, but the stains show no signs of rubbing off. Guess it doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things if his hands are dirty. Painted in the colors she’d chosen.

“I need to get back to the road, and then to Budapest, do you know the way?”

“And why do you think I would let you go?” She motions to his berry-stained hands with a sly twist of her lips. “You have eaten our food and belong to us now, never to return,” she tells him in a sing-song voice.

Clint just smiles. He’s getting used to her teasing, and the tricks of her tongue. The riddles and twists that she says at every turn.

“Does that mean that the birds must come with me then?” he asks, feigning innocence.

She frowns at him, looking around at the blue jays still ambling about them, looking hopeful for another treat.

“You are an incongruent human,” she grumbles then, but there’s a smile in her voice too, almost like she’s somehow pleased. She lies down on the rock, her legs long, and wiggles her toes at him, like she wants to tell him off.

“Soon it will be night and you do not wish to travel here in the dark.”

Clint listens to the sounds of the forest, the creaking of the trees, the whispering of the leaves. He looks back at her and her eyes are wide and green, and he senses no deception there. Not that it means much, he thinks. Before he can say anything, she’s speaking again.

“You can stay here, in this clearing, you’ll be safe here.”

“Will I?”

“I give you my word,” she says, and Clint thinks that the promise may mean more than the words imply, so he simply nods, accepting her offering.

She smiles, soft and guarded suddenly like he’s surprised her, but before he can ask, she’s rolled off the rock and into flight, disappearing among the heavy trees and rustling leaves.

* * *

 

She presses herself to sleep among her sisters. Wondering if they know that she has not killed the human. Wondering if they smell him on her. None of them says a thing when they all settle to rest, curled up under leaves and vines, on the riverbed and up in the branches of the highest tree. She has never given her word to anyone, not her name or her protection. It sits strangely in her belly, the feel of the spell. The tug of something suddenly anchored in her. A gift given and accepted. A bond that will be hard to break now.

Natasha looks up into the cloudless sky and to the stars, their eternal light guiding her eyes. Seeking out the Zorya, their protectors, the Auroras, and then the Little Bear. _Polaris_ , high in up the sky, where Simargl is chained. One day the winged hound will break the chain and devour the stars and everything will end. Her and her sisters, and him and his hungry humans who wish to rule the world. All of it will be gone. Swallowed up by the hound’s black, endless mouth.

She wonders if the coming of the human is a foretelling of the breaking of the world. When they will all go through the veil, never to return. The shimmering closing like a door that was never there in the first place. If her unwillingness to kill him has set things in motion her sisters cannot see. Things that she cannot see.

She swings sleeplessly from her branch. Most of the ancient woods are gone now, buried under human cities, houses made of stone, and of the trees they cut down without care. With the woods had gone her kin. Her pod of sisters is the last one here, the final few guarding this shimmering. It is their job to close it after themselves to seal the world to its fate.

She’s felt the restlessness for many years now, the encroaching of the humans, their sounds and smells getting ever nearer, and she and her sisters had held on, but she doesn’t know for how long now. She knows her sisters feel it too, the way they look into the distance, eyes already seeking the veil like they can see into the other side.

She sleeps fitfully, fingernails digging into the bark of her tree, seeking solace and comfort in the touch of something living and ancient.

When she seeks him out the next morning, carrying a weight of berries and mushrooms in a basket woven of leaves, he seems almost nervous, looking out to the sides of the clearing. His eyes squinting and a pink blush over the top of his cheeks.

He’s holding something behind his back, hiding it. Strangely she’s not wary, not bracing for an attack like she should be. She’s curious, trying not to smile and arching her neck to see what he’s trying to hide from her. Placing her basket down on the moss.

“Breakfast, for your journey,” she offers, craning for another look.

When he does eventually reveal what he’s been hiding, she is stunned. Brought to silence for the first time. In his hands, he holds a small flower crown. It’s messy; it holds no refinement or honed skill. Some of the stems stick out and the blooms are uneven as they go, but she would not change it for the world.

She wonders if he even knows what it means, what each of the flowers he has chosen means. She thinks not, but that doesn’t matter now; she takes the meaning of the gift to heart anyway.

“For me?” she asks, and berates herself for how cautious, how happy she sounds.

He nods, smiling a lopsided smile that she tries to not let into her heart, and she knows how she is failing.

“You have to put it in place,” she says, and she knows he doesn’t know the meaning of that gesture either. Doesn’t understand what she’s giving away, and maybe it doesn’t matter.

He looks at her from under his brows as he gently places the crown over her head. The tips of his callused fingers brush over the top of her ears and the sweep of her brow, and she misses them when they are gone.

The crown feels heavy, centered and meaningful in a way that nothing ever has, because she hasn’t let it. Maybe her pod mother would curse and mutter that she knew Natasha would be the troublemaker, knew that she would be the one to be pulled into the world of men.

He smiles when he looks at her, and there’s heartbreak written in every line of his face, in the crinkle of his eyes.

Then it all breaks, shatters like a sheet of ice on the river. The sound of gunfire and smoke.

* * *

 

He hears the sounds through the woods, familiar and alien at the same time. Bullets and boots, and shouted snippets of conversation that carry on the wind. She’s looking towards the sounds too, her face tight and hungry, eyes narrowed into slits like a beast of prey tracking its target. The flowers glow over her red hair, shining their unnatural light.

“They’re looking for me,” he says, “You should go.” Knowing it’s futile, knowing it means nothing.

She shakes her head and laughs, lips wide and her teeth sharp-looking, like little needlepoints in her mouth. And again he thinks, _predator_.

“No,” she says, drawing out the vowel. “They’ve come to my house now.”

The air prickles around her, changes, becomes darker like a storm cloud, and then she’s gone with just a flicker of light in her wake. Clint sees the strange glow of foxfire through the trees, moving towards the sounds of axes and gunfire and the burn of propane tanks.

Swearing, Clint pulls on his kevlar, yanking the straps into place. His arrows are still locked in their quiver and the bow folded upon itself. He flicks it open with a practiced hand and races to follow her light. She left a little breadcrumb trail for him after all.

Clint isn’t sure how long he runs for; it could be minutes or hours, the forest stretching around him like the salt water taffy his mother used to give him just to keep him quiet. It would catch in his teeth, making speaking hard. He doesn’t know why he suddenly thinks of that. Of cold east-coast October wind as the circus wound down for the winter and the caravan headed south. Cold water spray and salt on his lips, as his mother pulled him away from the pier.

It’s a surprise when he runs into the fight. The sounds and sights suddenly exploding around him like the forest had been sheltering him. She’s there, towering over the men and the shivering trees, her wingspan suddenly that of a great dragon. Eyes flashing as she smiles. Clint doesn’t know what the men see, if they see anything at all, as she plucks them from between the trees and crushes them in her hands like a child would an unwanted toy.

He tears his eyes away from her monstrous form, and flicks an arrow out of his quiver. It feels good in his hand, familiar and safe in this strange place.

There’s more of them now, swarming through the bushes and among the trees. Clint sees the insignia on their coats and on their arms. They aren’t even hiding it anymore. He spits and releases an arrow. It pierces clean through the man’s eye and spears him into the trunk of a tree. Left standing like a macabre puppet on a string.

Natasha is everywhere and nowhere, flickering lights and her wings covering the sky like a dome, shrouding them all in the dark. The gunshots spark and flash in the shadows, and briefly he wonders if they hurt her, he wonders if she can die.

It’s dark, not like the darkness of a spring night but dark like the inside of a cave, of an endless well of horrors. A man grabs him in the dark, a knife in his hand, but Clint catches his wrist. Twists until the bones break and the man screams, releasing his hold. The sound of his yell cut short as Clint shoves the knife into his belly and pulls. He feels the warm, wet slippery ooze of blood and entrails as the man dies against him, breath stuttering and then suddenly stopping.

Then everything is quiet and his own breath is loud and fast. Natasha’s form flickers in the unnatural darkness, and then she is her beautiful self again, but even in the dark Clint can see the blood between her teeth and marred in her fingernails, in the creases of her hands.

She comes closer, her hands pressing against his chest. She looks different, ethereal and beautiful, and somehow so unlike herself. Her gaze is soft as she looks up at him.

“You helped us, helped me, and for that you deserve a _reward_.” Her smile is coy, and yet somehow so false.

“No,” Clint shakes his head, placing his hands over hers on his chest. They feel so slight. “No reward, not like this.”

She looks at him with her head cocked to the side, astonished, as if no one has ever turned her down before.

“You don’t want this?” she asks, motioning to her body like it’s an offering. The long legs and ample cleavage.

“Not like this. Not if it’s only as a reward you’re offering.”

He takes her hands in his own, his still blood-covered and dirty, closing her fingers inside his own. Bending down, kissing the tips of them. She lets him feel the strength in them finally, the calluses and long hard tendons.

“Let’s go back,” he says, and she nods. Silent and thoughtful as she leads him back through the woods into the clearing.

He’s stripping off the kevlar when he notices it, just a tiny thing, pressed into the edge of one of the straps. Black and cylindrical, and Clint knows instantly what it is. Dread fills his belly. The guy must have placed it on him sometime in the fight, and he hadn’t even noticed.

Stupid, so _stupid_.

And now he’ll be the one who’s led them here, into the heart of the forest, into the center of Natasha’s home. The light in the tracker fades as Clint crushes it between his fingers, but in his heart of hearts, he knows that it’s too late. The signal would have made its way back to the base already. Hydra already knows.

He looks at Natasha, crouched by the stream, drinking from her cupped hands, the way her fingers twitch and flick as she swallows. He doesn’t know how to find the words, how to tell her what he’s brought into her home.

She looks up at him from the stream, her head cocked, tired and wistful. _She knows_ , he thinks, and the thought is so loud, so crystal clear that he wonders if it was even his to begin with. Her lips turn into a frown, and her eyes go to the horizon, the far distance beyond the tops of the trees.

“I dreamed it. I dreamed that your coming would be the end, but I did not know it would be so soon.”

“I am so sorry, I can – we can get help –.”

He’s scrambling down the bank of the river, trying to explain. She rises into the air to meet him and places her finger to his lips, silencing him. Then she smiles.

“You are kind, Clint. Kind and good, but this was going to come to pass sooner or later. We have known it for an age.”

“I work for an organization, SHIELD, they could help, they could –.”

“No,” she says and there’s strength behind her words. “No more men. This is to be the end. We will retreat beyond the shimmer, and before midsummer is over we will be gone, the veil closed forever.”

“But, you –, I’ll never see you again.”

She shakes her head, picks up the flower crown from where he’s dropped it. Holding it in her hands. Bluebells and periwinkles and morning glory. She touches the flowers and their leaves. For a moment, Clint thinks he sees a reflection, a prism of light reflected in each petal, but it’s gone before he can look closer.

“If you –,” she starts, and then hesitates. “If you want to find me, follow this to the shimmer. They will let you pass if you have it.”

Carefully, she places the flower crown back on his head and kisses his lips. The touch feels like flower petals too, soft and easily bruised, and it only lasts for a moment. He wants to pull her back, make the memory of it last, but he doesn’t. His hands hanging by his side uselessly. There’s sadness in her face, a wistful longing, he thinks, but before he can say anything, she’s flying across the clearing. Motioning for him to follow down a path he didn’t even see was there.

She takes him to the edge of the forest. It takes a lot less time than it should, like the geography itself is hastening his departure. Pushing him out, away from her. She stops suddenly, not too far from the road. He can see it between the trees, the ash-colored stone and dirt. She stays by a boulder that suddenly seems like a border between their worlds, not stepping beyond it. She smiles at him; it’s tight, and then she’s shooing him. Her hands motioning for him to go.

When he looks back from the road, she is no longer there, just a hint of a foxfire between the trees, a twinkling that feels like a goodbye.

His bike is still there, pushed into the ditch, and it takes him almost half an hour to drag it back up to the road, and another half an hour to siphon gas from one of the abandoned trucks still parked there. The doors of them have been left open like their owners meant to return. Clint knows that they never will, the forest slowly consuming their bodies, sucking them into the earth and making them part of itself.

The drive to Budapest feels shorter than it should too, the miles rolling under him with ease, his head filled with nothing but static. The weather stays mild, the sky covered in a hazy cloud, and a warm spring breeze pushes at his cheeks as he drives.

He thinks of the fluttering leaves and the soft web of Natasha’s wings, of spring rolling across the earth from a single place, taking away the cold, and waking up the slumbering plants and trees and animals.

He knows none of it can be true. They have science and technology and knowledge now. Everything is starting to feel like a dream. The more he tries to catch the strands of it, the more it disappears. Maybe he was hit on the head, maybe he lay in the clearing delirious from lack of food and water. The words of that tale feel more natural in his mouth; he finds himself saying them out loud as he reaches the extraction point.

The only thing that makes him hesitate is the flower crown. Somehow, it has survived the walk through the woods, the ride through the backroads, and even the afternoon traffic of downtown Budapest.

He feels the flowers in his hands, their tied-up stems, and Clint can’t make himself discard it. Some of the agents eye it with strange sort of apprehension, but no one asks. He finds that he doesn’t have the words to tell them anyway. These words belong to a different place, a different time, and a different story.

It’s almost 27 hours later when he finally lands at Andrews Air Force Base. It’s 2 am local time, and an overnight driver takes him back to his apartment. He leaves the flowers on the kitchen counter, fingers brushing the petals before he heads to sleep. He looks at the beige walls of his bedroom as he lies in the dark, as the early morning light moves across the dresser and cabinet in the corner. It all looks the same. Flat. Like none of it is real.

He wakes up late in the afternoon, groggy from the time change and long travel. The coffee machine sputters and grinds, the sounds of it both strange and familiar, when he finally makes it into the kitchen.

His eye catches the flower crown, the flowers of it still in full bloom. He doesn’t think much of them then. Drinks his coffee, puts bagel into the toaster and eats it plain.

He heads to the Triskelion for a debrief. The afternoon traffic is bad as he weaves through the cars on his motorcycle.

“Did you find anything in the woods?” Coulson asks him, and he says, “no.”

It’s not the first time he’s lied, but it’s the first time he hasn’t hesitated, not for a second, not for a fraction of a heartbeat. The words flow out of his mouth, easy and practiced like they’re the truth. Coulson nods and handles the papers with disinterest, and Clint wonders if it had always been this easy to lie to him.

He thinks that maybe SHIELD could help, could protect the woods and those who live there, but no. They would want to study it, study them, _her_. Bring in their people and their devices. Fragile leaves and flower crumpled underfoot. Trees cut and birds frightened out of their nests by noise and the sonic booms of the calibration.

No, SHIELD would only make it worse.

When he returns to his apartment, the flowers are still on the counter, the blue of the periwinkles shimmering bright in the dark of his apartment. None of them have wilted, or lost any of their luster. Clint lets his fingers brush over the leaves and stems again. It feels like they’re the only color left in the world.

When he goes for a glass of water in the middle of the night, it feels like the flowers glow in the darkness. An otherworldly light, a foxfire asking him to play. He knows he should report it, but he doesn’t want to. He thinks of the shimmering of her wings, the hummingbird flutter of them. The way she kissed him like it was a goodbye.

He picks his laptop off the table and opens it. The screen is bright, like a beacon in the dark kitchen. He books a flight, and another one. Pays with the credit card no one knows about. The one all spies have. The way out plan.

He doesn’t tell anyone, doesn’t call in sick or make up an excuse for a missed meeting. Just calls an Uber and heads to Dulles. Security is easy and no one stops him at the gate as he boards. No one seems to want to check his bag; it’s like they don’t see it. He opens it once in a cafe in an unnamed airport on a layover and looks at the flowers. Those perfect, beautiful blooms that don’t seem to change or die.

When he gets to Berlin, it’s already the next day. He wanders aimlessly around the airport, waiting, waiting. He eats a slice of pizza, but it tastes like ash in his mouth.

Finally, they call his final flight. He sits by the bulkhead and people walk by him unseeing, like he isn’t really there at all.

Budapest is exactly how he remembers. The lights, the sounds and colors. He rents a car from the airport. A small crappy thing that blends in with the locals. He doesn’t need to think as he drives out of town, turning and navigating like he knows exactly where he’s going.

It feels like no time at all when he’s stopping by that ditch. The cars are gone, but the woods look nothing like he remembers.

The ground is ashen and black, churned up into mud. The trunks of the trees cut and torn as if by a great machine, the leaves burned. He walks past the devastation, goes deeper. There is still some green left, but it all seems futile.

When he reaches the clearing, he sees their torn-up camps in the thicket, sees the burnt-out husks of the trees and the true desecration of the forest. The rock where she’d sat is cracked, almost cloven in two, the moss ripped up, and no blue jays titter nearby.

Clint pushes his hand into the bag, feeling the petals under his fingers, and he keeps walking. Going deeper. In the dark, he makes his way, suddenly knowing exactly where to step, where to duck and where to lean in to not make a sound.

It opens in front of him, both suddenly and with an aching slowness. Like a great wall of color and light. It shimmers and trembles like a soap bubble in the breeze his mother blew for him on a cold New England beach. His eyes prickle with tears as he watches it, and then behind it, beyond the veil, there’s a foxfire. A flicking, gentle light asking him to play.

Clint smiles, and takes a deep breath, and steps into the shimmer.

 


End file.
